by Jane Davitt
He could feel John’s hand settle on his lower back as he drew the sheet down slowly, only revealing the top third or so of the remains on the gurney, and stared at them. They were burned to black in some places.
They didn’t look human, and closing his eyes didn’t take away the sight of them. Nick had to turn, walk away from John and the gurney, and press himself against the wall, hands over his face. “Cover it up,” he mumbled, hoping John would be able to understand him. “Please.”
There was a rustle and then John was behind him, standing close, between Nick and what was left of his father’s body. His father’s body. That twisted, charred lump of human remains had been Nick’s father.
John’s hands were on him, the clean, familiar smell of him wiping out the reek of disinfectant and death. John was shaking a little, too, which helped, but his hands were steady as he rubbed Nick’s arms, forcing some warmth into Nick’s chilled skin.
“It’s over, it’s done,” he whispered into Nick’s ear. “Over. We can go now, love.”
Nick wanted the comfort of a real hug, but he didn’t think he could bear to turn around knowing that he’d see the sheet-covered gurney again. “But it’s not, is it? It’s not over. I mean, maybe it is, but maybe it’s not.” Maybe his father would whisper into his other ear in the very next second, or in ten minutes, or in ten hours. He’d never know for sure until it happened, and sometimes the waiting…sometimes it felt like the waiting was what was driving him closer to his own death instead of the inevitability.
“This part is over.” John pulled Nick back against him, wrapping his arms around him, a solid barrier for Nick to lean against. “Do you think you’re up to getting out of here, because I really don’t think they’ll like it if I throw up over their nice clean floor.”
That snapped Nick from his haze of self-involvement; he turned in John’s embrace, keeping his eyes shut, and hugged him. “Yeah. Let’s go.”
Somehow, between the two of them, they made it out into the hallway, which was blissfully empty. At the far end was a sign that said “Exit,” and they headed toward it without hesitating. Stepping outside into the fresh air ‑‑ even if it was too warm ‑‑ was such an enormous relief that Nick stopped and pulled John to him again, holding on.
“Are you okay?”
John took a deep breath and released it with a shudder. “Aye. Sorry.”
He patted Nick’s hip and then stepped back, his eyes going to a red car, the top down, a short distance away. Nick followed John’s gaze, seeing a woman dabbing at her eyes, her head bowed. His throat constricted. God, so many people left grieving. As he began to look away, the woman’s head came up sharply, as if she could sense that she was being stared at, her mouth tight and angry.
Nick gave her an apologetic smile and turned to John. “I think we need to go back and get some paperwork signed, don’t we? So that we can arrange the ‑‑”
“You!” The woman had gotten out of the car and was walking toward them quickly, lush curves and a spectacular amount of auburn hair doing a good job of taking attention away from the slight sag of her features. Late forties, Nick guessed, dressed ten years younger. “Are you Nick? Nick Kelley? You are, aren’t you!”
“Um…yes?” Nick tried not to let his eyes be drawn to the jiggle of her breasts, because that was rude, but she definitely could have used a more supportive bra. “I’m sorry, do I know you?”
She reached out a hand and he shook it; she grabbed it with her other hand, holding his between both of hers. “No, but I know you. You’re Brian’s son, aren’t you? I’d have known you anywhere.” She blinked. “Oh, but you don’t know me! I’m Alicia. Alicia Kent?” At Nick’s confused look, she clasped his hand more tightly. “I was your father’s girlfriend.” A dramatic sniffle; it was hard to tell if it was genuine or not, but Nick liked to think that he could read people pretty well. “We’d talked about getting married, you know. He was…he was on his way to see me when the plane…”
“You’re the one who identified him,” John put in, more, Nick thought, to divert Alicia’s attention than because he wanted an answer. It had to have been her, after all.
“Don’t remind me.” She shivered, which did look real. Nick couldn’t imagine many people being unmoved by what fire did to flesh. “God, I can’t believe it, you know? He had so much going for him…” Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “He told me you lived abroad. England.”
“Scotland.” There was a note of affront in John’s voice.
“Yeah?” She shook her hair back. “Well, that’s part of England, isn’t it?”
“No.”
John took a deep breath to say more, but Alicia hadn’t really heard and was already going on. “And England’s a long way from the States, so I can’t help but wonder what the hell you’re doing here for a man you haven’t thought about for twenty fucking years.” She scrabbled inside the white leather bag slung across her shoulder, taking out a pack of cigarettes and a gold lighter. “You knew about it, didn’t you?” She lit a cigarette and took a long drag, her gaze traveling between them, shrewd and dry-eyed now. “You’ve been here a few days, getting ready to put the screws on, haven’t you? Dear Daddy left me, boo hoo, kiss it better with a nice chunk of cash.”
Nick had no idea what to make of this woman; all he did know was that he didn’t like her, and he didn’t think John did, either. “Knew about what?”
“Please.” Alicia blew smoke directly at him. “I’m not stupid ‑‑ I know there’s no way you’d be here otherwise. So did you finally break down after all these years and call him? Is that how you found out?”
“I might be able to answer that if I had any idea what you were talking about.” Nick took half a step back to be further away from the cigarette smoke she was exhaling. “I was on some list in a computer somewhere as my father’s next of kin and they called me when the plane went down. We came. That’s pretty much all there is to it as far as I know, so if there’s more to the story, you’re going to have to share it.”
“Or walk away,” John put in.
Alicia threw him a wary, assessing look. “Brian got lucky, just like you two lover boys were hoping to. Well, his luck ran out, which I have to say doesn’t surprise me.” Her eyes got a little wistful. “At least he hit the big one before he went. It’s what he would’ve wanted.”
“Got lucky? Marrying you, you mean?” John returned her appraising look, rubbing his hand over the back of his neck as he looked her over. “You’re well-off, are you, then?” He sounded skeptical and Nick shared his doubts. Alicia was flashy but it was the kind of flashy John referred to as “shop-soiled”; the convertible was a bright red, but the paint was pitted and peeling on one door.
“I am now,” Alicia said, preening. “Or at least I will be once I can figure out where he stashed it; I’m all he had when it comes right down to the wire. You never had any time for him,” she gave Nick a scornful look, “and that other brat’s just a kid.”
Nick felt, if it was possible, more confused than he already had. “Wait. What?”
“Look; I don’t care how far you came ‑‑ that money’s mine.” Alicia narrowed her eyes and stepped in closer to Nick, then actually jabbed him in a chest with a pointed-nailed finger. Did people really do that? He almost laughed. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay out of my way, because I’ve waited a long time for my ship to come in, and I’m not just going to step aside and let you take it away from me.”
Wondering just when she was going to run out of clichés, and still in the dark, Nick exchanged a glance with John and then opened his mouth to speak.
“As you’ll see from the way we’re staring at you, we don’t have a bloody clue what you’re on about,” John said, forestalling him, sounding…foreign, somehow, the lilt in his voice in sharp contrast to Alicia’s strident tones. He sounded surprisingly reasonable and calm. “What money and what kid? Nick doesn’t have any brothers or sisters as far as I know, and I think he’d h
ave got around to mentioning them at some point.”
Alicia’s eyes narrowed. “This innocent act isn’t fooling me,” she warned them.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, woman,” John said, finally losing his temper, something Nick had been expecting to happen much earlier given the stress the man was under. “Will you speak sense or be on your way? Answer my bloody question!”
Clearly taken aback, Alicia stammered out, “Brian had another son ‑‑ you didn’t know? He’s…I don’t know, seven or eight. He lives in Atlanta with his mother. But Brian never loved her! She tricked him into getting her pregnant; she wanted to marry him, but he saw right through her.” At John’s glower, she went on meekly. “Brian won some money, about a week and a half ago.”
Nick was so stunned to learn that his father had another child that he barely heard her as she continued to talk about the money ‑‑ some kind of lottery thing.
“It’s mine!” Alicia was defensive again now. “He would have wanted me to have it.”
“Fine,” Nick said, more to shut her up than anything else. “Keep it. I don’t want it.”
Her lips curled in a sneer that looked more at home than a smile would have been. “We’re talking about a hundred thousand and change; you can’t tell me that’s not worth fighting over.”
“Would that be dollars?” John sounded interested. “So, maybe fifty grand in real money? Och, I’d fight hard enough if Geordie overcharged me for a pint, but that much money is more trouble than it’s worth. The taxman’d likely grab most of it, and to be honest there’s not a lot to spend it on where we live.” He gave her a smile that didn’t look remotely friendly and added softly, “He’s told you that you can keep it. Anything else we can do for you? Because I’m thinking it’s time you left.”
“Well, aren’t we Mister High and Mighty?” Alicia took a last drag off her cigarette and dropped it to the ground, then put her hand on her hip. “No wonder everyone thinks English people are all snobs.”
“Scottish,” Nick said, choosing to focus on that instead of any of the other things she’d said because he knew it would bother John. “Just go, okay? I don’t think we have anything else to say to each other.”
Alicia smoothed her hair back and adjusted her leather purse strap. “Fine. Have a nice life. I know I’m going to.” And with a toss of her head she was gone, clicking her way back across the parking lot in her high heels, which made her hips sway to and fro in a way she probably ‑‑ mistakenly ‑‑ thought was alluring.
“God, I need a drink,” John muttered. “Or is it too early?” He turned to Nick. “You’ll pay her no mind,” he said authoritatively. “She’s up to something, that one, and I don’t trust her as far as I could throw her.” He cast a dark look at the convertible as the engine started. “And I’d like to. Throw her far, far away.”
“If the opportunity arises, you certainly have my permission.” Nick thought he sounded as weary as he felt. “You think she was lying about the kid?” He shook his head before John could answer, and went on, “I don’t know…I mean, she didn’t seem smart enough to come up with something like that just to push me ‑‑ us ‑‑ off balance.”
They watched as the car drove away, then went back inside and dealt with the paperwork. As he signed the last form, Nick was aware of a familiar and not entirely welcome prickling sensation just outside his skin. He always thought of it as his aura reacting to the presence of a spirit, but he’d never heard of anyone else having precisely that reaction, so it was hard to say for sure.
Hard to say, maybe, but it didn’t leave him with any doubt.
He waited until they were outside the building again before he stopped John, bending over slightly and bracing his hands on his thighs just above his knees, breathing. The ghost wasn’t getting too close, but it was insistent, following him. Nick tried to focus and found his eyes drawn to the cigarette butt that Alicia had discarded. His chest felt tight, panicky, in a way he couldn’t explain. “You’re going to have to drive,” he told John.
“Nick?” John reached out, resting his hand on Nick’s arm. “What is ‑‑ oh.” He slid his hand into the pocket of Nick’s jacket and took out the car keys, the jangle of the metal discordant and loud to Nick’s ears. “Just over here, love. Not far.”
Leaning on John and trying to breathe slowly, Nick made it to their car, collapsing into the passenger seat and closing his eyes. He was aware of John beside him, but the reality they shared was starting to slip away.
“Do you want me to get us out of here?” John sounded calm. “Outrun it, maybe?”
“Yes,” Nick said immediately, but that was just his instinctive reaction and he knew that John knew that, too. “No. I don’t know.” His skin was crawling; the spirit was dark and angry, coiled up, waiting to spring its horror on someone. On Nick, and he didn’t want it.
He leaned forward and covered his eyes with his hands, trying to breathe. This was going to be bad, and he couldn’t ‑‑
“Yes,” he said again, and this time he meant it. “Yes. Go. Drive.”
“Right.” John gave Nick’s back a brief, reassuring rub. “Buckle up.”
Nick fastened his seat belt, usually the first thing he did when he got into a car since the accident that had killed Matthew, and leaned back, the traffic noise and insistent sunlight both dimmed and washed-out. Too much to think about, too much to deal with ‑‑
“Back to the hotel?”
“Yeah. Do you think you can find it?” Moving made things easier; put a little distance between them and the ghost.
“Aye. I’ve the maps, don’t worry.” John seemed confident that he’d be able to get them where they needed to go, so Nick concentrated on the sound of the car’s engine, on the feel of his khakis against his palms where they were curled around his knees.
Ten minutes into the drive ‑‑ and it was only a total of twenty or so back to the hotel, Nick thought ‑‑ he knew. “It’s not enough. It’s…he’s too strong. He’s mad ‑‑ um, angry, not crazy, although maybe that, too. He’s from the crash. He has to be.” He kept his eyes closed because he thought that if the ghost suddenly manifested in the car he might go crazy; he couldn’t deal with that, not in the car. Not in the car. “God. He’s so strong.”
“So are you.” John sounded very sure about that but Nick couldn’t share his confidence. “I can’t feel him at all. Not even got the creepy-crawlies up my back.”
They drew up at a red light and John twisted around and put his hand over Nick’s, squeezing it. “Nearly there ‑‑” His eyes widened and he jerked his hand back. “God!” He licked his lips, his eyes meeting Nick’s. “I see what you mean.”
The blast of a horn behind them as the light changed to green jolted them both. “All right, damn it,” John muttered, slamming his foot down and sending the car shooting forward. “I’m moving, aren’t I?” He gave Nick a sidelong glance. “Can you see him? Or do you not want to try right now? I could maybe put the radio on…distract you?”
“I don’t want to ‑‑ I can’t, not in the car. I can’t.” Nick felt panicked, trapped, and he had to fight the instinct to throw the door open and jump out of the moving car.
“Ignore him.”
John turned a corner, going fast enough to get a warning screech from the tires, and headed toward a glimmer of blue. The ocean. Their hotel was by the ocean. Nick stared at the water, willing it to get closer, but it wasn’t working.
“Did I tell you?” John’s voice was casual but pitched loud enough to have Nick turning to look at him. “Sheila’s youngest has started playing the recorder.”
“What?” It was unexpected enough to be distracting.
“Oh, aye.” John nodded, indicating a turn and slotting the car neatly into a space in the left-hand lane. “Got plans to be in the next school concert, so she has. Sheila keeps hiding it, but wee Mary always seems to find it, usually before breakfast, just in time to get in a bit of a practice before school. She’s getting really go
od at ‑‑”
John broke off, nodding at the hotel. “There we are. You want to go in? Or find a quiet bit of the beach?”
“Is there one?” Nick tried to see, but the sand looked crowded to him, and the thought of all those people around, all those people watching him, made him feel worse again. At least John’s attempt to distract him had worked for a little bit. “No, inside. Okay?”
Chapter Seven
He could barely pay any attention to what he was doing as John parked the car and they went through the lobby of the hotel and up to their room. Acutely aware of the spirit lurking behind him, he had to turn and look over his shoulder while John was unlocking the door.
“This is going to be bad,” he said, going inside. He paced in circles, waiting for it to hit. The door clicked shut ‑‑ if only it could keep everything out ‑‑ and he sat down on the end of the bed, then immediately got up again. “It doesn’t happen like this. They’re almost never this strong, and they don’t leave their…John…”
“Right here.” John went to him, standing close but not touching him. Nick couldn’t blame him. John didn’t see or hear the ghosts, not really, but he picked up on them enough to be, well, spooked, and the feelings usually intensified when he was in contact with Nick.
Not that it had ever stopped John giving Nick a hug when he needed it.
“Is he talking to you yet?”
John and he had developed a routine of sorts, with Nick finding that if he split his attention between John and the ghost, initially at least, he stayed in control more.
Giving in wasn’t usually the best tactic; not when you were dealing with spirits who defined pissed off at times. This one, though…
Nick inhaled and his perspective changed, like the view from a camera’s lens circling. He followed it, spinning, and then the spirit was there, black and full of hatred. It felt like it was clawing at him, and he jerked backwards away from it. “Don’t touch me,” he warned John. “This is…just don’t.” He didn’t want John to feel this.